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[Contents.]
A few minor typographical errors have been corrected.
[List of Illustrations] (In certain versions of this etext [in certain browsers] clicking on the image will bring up a larger version.) [Books by Upton Sinclair] [Index] (etext transcriber's note) |
The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair
The Autobiography
of
UPTON SINCLAIR
New York
HARCOURT, BRACE & WORLD, INC.
Printed in the United States of America
Preface
All through my seventy-one years of writing life—I started at thirteen—I have had from my readers suggestions that I should tell my own story. When I was halfway through those writing years I accepted the suggestion and wrote a book called American Outpost. The major part of that book, revised and brought up to date, is incorporated in this volume.
I put myself in the position of a veteran of many campaigns who gathers the youngsters about his knee. He knows these youngsters cannot really share the anguish and turmoil of his early years, for they belong to a new generation which is looking to be entertained and amused. So the old campaigner takes a casual and lighthearted tone.
If any old-timer is offended by this—well, there are any number of serious books, plays, and pamphlets of mine that he can read, plus an anthology and a selection of letters written to me by the really great writers of our time. If that is not enough he can travel to the University of Indiana and there, in the Lilly Library, he can read the 250,000 letters that have been written to me over the years—and the carbon copies of my replies. After he has read all this, I shall have written more.
Contents
List of Illustrations
(The illustrations will be found between pages 166 and 167. All but the last three were supplied by the Upton Sinclair Collection, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Indiana.)
[Upton Sinclair at the age of eight]
[Upton Sinclair at twenty-seven, when he was writing The Jungle]
[Winston Churchill reviews The Jungle]
[George Bernard Shaw at Ayot-St. Lawrence, about 1913]
[Mary Craig Sinclair and Upton Sinclair in Bermuda, 1913]
[George Sterling, his wife, Carrie, and Jack London]
[Sergei Eisenstein, about 1933]
[Upton Sinclair during the EPIC campaign, 1934]
[Upton Sinclair and Harry Hopkins, 1934]
[Flivver King in Detroit, 1937]
[Upton Sinclair, about 1960, with autographed picture of Albert Einstein]
[Upton Sinclair standing before his home in Monrovia, California]
[May Hard Sinclair and Upton Sinclair, 1962]
[Upton Sinclair with seventy-nine of the books he has written]